


Your Mouth is Buttered With Lies

by VivaRocksteady



Category: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bill is 33, Drug-Induced Sex, Extremely Dubious Consent, Holden is 19, Holden is part of the Manson family, LSD, M/M, Mentions of Underage Sex, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Period Typical Attitudes, Poor lost lamb, Tw: Charles manson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 03:15:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16400297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VivaRocksteady/pseuds/VivaRocksteady
Summary: In 1967, 33-year-old Bill Tench is part of the FBI's organized crime unit, helping the LAPD infiltrate a notorious drug den. Everyone who meets the Family gets a warm welcome, and Bill's welcome comes in the form of a 19 year old boy.





	1. You Said Your Body Was Young But Your Mind Was Very Old

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [lies_d](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lies_d) for giving this a beta read for me!

“Here it is,” said Bill’s ride as they pulled up to the house in Topanga Canyon. It was large and stately, but the crowd of hippies around made it seem rundown and threadbare, forced to support more people than was intended.

And there were a lot of hippies around. Bill could smell them from here. There was an old wooden wash tub with no less than four naked people in it, cheerfully passing a blunt between them. A young man was playing guitar while others milled around in various states of undress and insobriety. Many of them were clearly underage— especially the girls.

“Jesus,” said Bill. “This was a bad idea. I’m going to stick out like a sore thumb.”

“Mm, you’d be surprised. They’re used to all types up here,” said his ride. “Just follow my lead and keep your eyes peeled. Look bewildered.” The officer grinned at him. “Yeah, just like that.”

Bill had been transferred to the FBI’s organized crime unit about six months ago, and had spent a lot of that time moving between Virginia and Los Angeles, which may as well have been the fucking moon for how people did things. Teenagers rioting over a curfew? Get the fuck out of here. 

His ride was an Officer Whitbeck, a cynical-eyed young buck in his late twenties, not too long home from Vietnam. He had been undercover among the youth counterculture for months, so he didn’t look like a cop at all— not with that shaggy haircut, or that beard, or those stupid clothes, or that car. But Bill knew the look of a veteran when he saw one. It was always in the eyes. Bill was only 33, but between his father’s war, and his, and this kid’s, and whatever was coming next, he couldn’t really blame all these hippies for just wanting it to _stop_.

“And don’t get dosed,” Whitbeck said as he opened the car door. “Don’t drink anything. You’ve never done acid, right?” The kid squinted at him. “You— you weren’t in ‘Nam, were you?”

“My war was Korea,” said Bill.

“Oh.” Whitbeck smiled weakly at him. “Well, don’t get dosed.”

Bill left his jacket in the car, and his sunglasses, even though it was bright and dusty and the glare hit him smack in the face. He could at least try to look like a regular square and not a literal narc, which he was. He was uncomfortable in just a black t-shirt. He'd been reassured he looked like he could be hanging around a pool hall, but he wasn't convinced.

Bill got a few looks as he followed Whitbeck up into the house; a few craned necks. Some girls giggled at him, but it wasn’t the naked derision he was expecting. They seemed excited to see him. A potential convert.

Whitbeck greeted a few people as they went, slipping easily into the youth lingo.

Bill heard the low rumble of a man’s voice up in the main room, a tone of voice he’d heard before. The voice of a man who was not well, but nonetheless had others in his thrall. He’d heard that voice when he was briefly trained in hostage negotiations. It wasn’t his favourite.

“Hey, Charlie,” said Whitbeck.

The very not well man grinned up at him, though it was really less of a grin and more a predatory baring of teeth. “Hey there, Cowboy,” he drawled. “What have you brought me?”

Charlie gave everybody nicknames. They fostered group bonding. They could also be used to depersonalize and destabilize. It was easy to disguise one as the other.

“A new friend,” said Whitbeck. “He’s one of my buyers, and he wanted to meet you.”

Charlie was holding court, surrounded by young girls— and they were definitely girls, not women— hanging off his every word. They also smiled up at Bill, welcoming.

Except one, the girl Bill recognized as the one they were after. She was the 15-year-old daughter of a Republican senator’s aide, and she looked wary. Still new, he supposed, still figuring out her place here.

As Whitbeck and Charlie talked, Bill kept his eyes peeled, noting and corroborating any relevant details. Everybody in the room was white. The girls were all young. Charlie was maybe Bill’s age, with an unruly mane of black hair in stark contrast to the military cut Bill had had for 15 years.

The other men in the room were in their thirties or older— Straight Satans, by the looks of them, hardened bikers that the FBI suspected were the real brains behind this perpetual love-in. Charlie was just the face they used to get their product to the peace-loving youth. He was marketing.

Bill had noticed that while all the young women around the commune were in full-on hippie uniform, the young men ran a wider gamut. Some wore the hippie persona, long hair and beards, tattered old clothes, but some still looked like normal kids. Mechanics, malt shop boys, liberal-type students.

 _They use the girls to lure the boys up_ , Whitbeck had explained. It didn’t take a lot to get a nice young man to give a perky, willing girl a ride, or a meal, or try reefer or something stronger.

There were two boys who looked like students in the main room. They were sitting on a couch with a girl between them. One of the boys, whom Bill mentally called the C student, was lolling, a dumb smile on his face. The girl was smiling stupidly, too, stroking the C student’s arm.

The other boy, the A+ student, was sitting primly, staring into nothing. His hair was short and neat, and not at all stylish. His eyes were large and round, and he was gawky as hell. He wore a yellow shirt with the buttons done all the way up to his collar, and his trousers were just slightly too short. They must not have kept up with his last growth spurt— he couldn’t have been older than sixteen.

If anybody else was a narc in here, it would be the A+ student. But he was just a teenager, and had obviously come up here to score reefer with his much cooler friend, so Bill put it out of his head. 

Charlie was sizing Bill up. He shook his hand, and held it for way too long. “It’s a real pleasure to meet you, friend.”

“Likewise,” Bill smiled, trying not to pull his hand away. _Their drugs must be a hell of a thing, if people are willing to put up with this,_ he thought.

Charlie grinned maniacally and crossed his arms. “But if your friend wants to buy from us, Cowboy,” he told Whitbeck, “he has to be initiated.”

Whitbeck chuckled. “He’s looking forward to it.”

This is what they came for. Just as Charlie used the girls to lure boys to the house, when newcomers came, he used the girls to test them. If they passed, they were trusted— mostly because Charlie now had blackmail material.

Bill, of course, had no intention of sleeping with whichever girl was chosen for him. They were hoping it would be the Republican daughter, so he could talk to her alone, get some information, and hopefully convince her to leave with them. 

Bill’s undercover identity would be burned, of course, and they ran the risk of burning Whitbeck as well. But there was a lot of pressure from the senator’s office to get the girl out. And they still had Whitbeck’s partner, a female undercover officer who was now amorously petting Whitbeck and resting her face in his neck.

(Maybe they shouldn’t have briefed Bill about that. The FBI still didn’t have female agents, and he had an involuntary twitch when he saw her debase herself like that. _She’s just doing her job,_ he reminded himself. _Let her do it_.)

“You sure, Soldier?” Charlie teased. “You ain’t never had a ride like one of mine.”

Bill shrugged. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous, but life’s about trying new things.”

Charlie laughed, too loud and too long.

Bill let his eyes fall on the Republican daughter, who was frowning and staring at the floor. One of the other girls was whispering in her ear. Bill couldn’t decide if he should appear comforting or predatory.

“New things! You got that right, Soldier!” Charlie was giving him that deranged stare. “I got just the ticket.”

Charlie stepped over to where the students were sitting. He stroked the A+ student’s hair gently.

Bill blinked.

“Boy Scout here will take real good care of you,” said Charlie.

The A+ student took a long time to focus back on reality. He took his eyes off the nothing he was staring at to gaze up at Charlie. Charlie grinned, but the boy didn’t smile back.

Bill swallowed hard, and discreetly glanced at Whitbeck, who was now deep in conversation with one of the Straight Satans. The Republican daughter was sitting at the Satan’s feet, her head resting on his knee. 

Whitbeck’s female partner was draped across his back. She was watching Bill. She blinked at him meaningfully, and he took it to mean, _just go along with it_.

“He… he’s one of yours?” Bill asked.

“Sure is,” Charlie preened. “Boy Scout’s been with us for months, haven’t you, baby?”

Boy Scout didn’t reply. His eyes sank shut as Charlie curled his fingers around his face.

Charlie glared at Bill suspiciously. “What, you don’t like him?” He stepped away from Boy Scout and got close to Bill. "You're saying my Boy Scout's not good enough for you?"

“No, I like him, I…I've never…” 

“Ahh!” Charlie barked a laugh. “I can always tell the closet cases.” He nudged Bill roughly. "You were the good soldier, weren't you? Did as you were told, followed orders, and you've done it so long you don't even know what you want anymore. But here, Soldier, we don't take orders. We only follow the dictates of love, and love knows no boundaries. You dig it?"

 _What?_ "I dig it," said Bill. 

Charlie barked an awful little laugh again. He pulled Boy Scout up sharply by the arm, and shoved him forward with a slap on his ass. “Get to it, kiddies.” 

Boy Scout didn’t even look startled. He moved robotically towards Bill and took his hand.

“Come on,” he said, leading Bill away.

Bill was just relieved Boy Scout could actually talk.

—

Boy Scout led him to one of the large house’s many bedrooms. There was a psychedelic patterned blanket over a wide bed, fairy lights hung around the walls, candles everywhere.

Boy Scout shut the door softly. When Bill turned to him and opened his mouth, the boy was already trying to open Bill’s fly.

“Whoa, hey. Cut that out!” Bill shoved the kid away and hastily fastened his pants.

Boy Scout furrowed his brow, looking at him with confusion. “Don’t be nervous. I have nothing but love for you.” He stepped forward and pushed his mouth up against Bill’s mouth, hard.

“Wait, wait!” Bill took the kid by his shoulders and held him at a short distance. “Can we just talk? First? Please?”

“Language is a lie,” said Boy Scout. “The only thing that matters is action.” He guided Bill’s hands up to cup his face. He sighed, nuzzling into Bill’s hand, a happy little smile on his lips.

Bill felt his face get warm. He frowned. “How old are you?”

Boy Scout opened those big, bright eyes. “Old enough.”

“So, what, sixteen?”

Boy Scout laughed, sort of. “You’re cute,” he said. He leaned up for another kiss.

Bill stood there, motionless.

Boy Scout sighed. He pulled Bill’s arms around him in a loose hug. “This particular arrangement of flesh and bone was formed nineteen years ago. But every cell in the human body regenerates within seven years, so I’m much younger than nineteen.” He whispered the last part against Bill’s mouth. “On the other hand, every molecule of matter in our bodies has existed in some form or another since the beginning of time. So you and me, Soldier, are both as young as babes and as old as the stars.”

Bill did not like that answer at all. He gently withdrew his arms and stepped back, scowling.

Boy Scout sighed again, an indulgent little smile on his face. He sat neatly on the bed, back straight. “All right. What would you like to talk about?”

It took Bill a moment to move himself to sit next to the kid. Boy Scout seemed to preen a bit, enjoying the closeness.

“What’s your name?” asked Bill.

“Boy Scout,” was the chipper reply.

“That’s not your real name.”

“Boy Scout is my _true_ name,” the kid said insistently. “It’s the name of my soul. Just like the name of your soul is Soldier. Charlie sees the truth in people and brings it forward.” Boy Scout fiddled with the buttons on Bill’s shirt, but did nothing else. 

_Talk about depersonalizing,_ Bill thought, but he felt uncomfortably exposed.

He put a hand on the kid’s shoulder, and rubbed gently. Boy Scout made a sound not unlike a purr, leaning into it.

“Do your parents know you’re here?” 

“The earth is my mother and the sky is my father,” said Boy Scout. He ducked under Bill's arm, put his arms around Bill’s waist, and leaned into his chest. “They always know where I am.” 

Well, Bill probably should have expected that. He dug his cigarettes out of his pants.

“You want a smoke?”

“No, thank you. I don’t like the smell.”

Bill laughed. “But you like the smell of reefer?”

“I don’t mind it so much, but I barely touch it. When I do, I put it in food.” 

“Did you do that today?”

“Mmm,” Boy Scout nuzzled his face into Bill’s chest. Bill took that as a yes. 

“What are you doing here, if you don’t like reefer?” 

Boy Scout looked up at him with a searing gaze. “Grass is kid’s stuff. What Charlie gives us is a torch light, a bright beacon illuminating the truth in the darkness of ourselves. A square couldn't understand.”

“Oh,” said Bill. So acid, then, which wasn’t even illegal. He needed to find lots of reefer, or lots of dope, or get to the Republican daughter, or else this was a waste of time. 

He took a deep drag and let out the smoke. Boy Scout leaned up and inhaled deeply, then he coughed a little, and hid his face in Bill’s chest bashfully.

“What are you doing? I thought you didn’t like the smell.” Bill couldn’t help but smile.

“I don’t.” Boy Scout looked up, eyes wide and earnest. “But it came out of you. Your blood released cells into your lungs, and your lungs released them into the smoke, and now they’re inside me. We’ve made love.”

 _What the hell?_ Bill hid his confusion with another drag, rubbing the kid’s back. Boy Scout sighed appreciatively.

“How did you find this place?” he asked. 

“They were camping on a beach near San Francisco, and I was hitchhiking home.”

“Home?”

“Home to Charlie. To my Family.” Boy Scout had once again leaned his face into Bill’s chest.

“Oh. Where were you before?”

“Oregon. Montana. New York. All over.”

Bill squeezed the kid’s shoulder. “So you went looking for Charlie? You had heard about him?”

“No,” Boy Scout yawned. “I didn’t know what I was looking for. I was just looking. Like everybody else. Like you. Then Charlie brought me home.”

Bill let the kid cuddle with him a bit, torn between wanting to interrogate and not wanting to spook him.

“What is it…” he started. “What do you guys want here? What are you trying to do?”

Boy Scout lifted his head. He scooted closer, so his hip was against Bill’s, and Bill’s hand fell to the boy’s waist. Boy Scout rested his head on Bill’s shoulder. He looked troubled. 

Finally, he spoke. “We just want to show everyone the way. How much better things could be. If you could only see the truth. Charlie thinks his music will open people’s minds.” 

“Do you think it will?”

Boy Scout furrowed his brow. “I don’t know,” he said. “Music’s just one way. I just wish… if everyone understood, if everyone remembered how to love, then we wouldn’t have _war_.” He spat out the last word. He looked deeply distressed.

Bill took another slow drag. _A noble cause,_ he thought. But he’d been to war, and love couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

“My father was a soldier, too,” said Boy Scout, and Bill tried not to let on how taken aback he was by this display of biographical honesty. “The war broke him. It broke the world. It broke everyone. He didn’t know how to love anymore. So he tried to break me, too. He thought he was doing me a favour. You won’t do that to your kids, will you?”

“I don’t have kids,” Bill said, but his throat felt strangely tight. It was hard to keep regret out of his voice, because he’d always expected to have around three by now.

“Oh,” said Boy Scout, with a kind of sympathy that rang false. “You will. You’ll father nations.” 

He hugged Bill close and trembled slightly. Bill, after a moment, hugged him back, squeezing the back of the boy’s neck reassuringly.

“It’s okay,” said Boy Scout, voice muffled. “I have a better Family now. So do you.”

“Yeah,” said Bill, weakly.

“There’s gonna be a change soon,” Boy Scout went on, his voice sing-songy. “We’re gonna start again and make a better world.” Then he pulled away and kicked off his shoes. He crawled up the bed. “Will you cuddle with me, Soldier?”

BIll ashed his cigarette on the night stand and laid back on the bed. Boy Scout cuddled up to him, head on his chest, reminiscent of lazy Sunday mornings with Nancy. 

Boy Scout hummed tunelessly while Bill stroked his hair and back, gently petting Bill in return.

“Is there anything anyone could do,” Bill eventually asked, “to convince you to leave here?”

Boy Scout chuckled softly. “No. I’m happier here than I’ve ever been.”

“What about the girls? You think some of them might want to go home?”

Boy Scout looked confused. “No. Charlie loves the girls the most. They’re happy.” 

“The way he treats them? And you? Pimping you out?”

Boy Scout looked even more confused. “Charlie doesn’t pimp me out,” he said. He patted Bill’s chest fondly. “Charlie says girls are built to receive love. They’re lucky. Some boys are made for love too, in their souls, boys like me. But it’s harder for us. Fewer people want to share love with us, because they don’t… they’re stuck. They don’t understand. But you understand, right, Soldier?”

“Yeah,” Bill said. He ran a hand gently over Boy Scout’s face. The boy smiled brilliantly at him.

“What about those Straight Satans?” Bill asked after a long, long pause. “They don’t seem very loving.”

“I’m not allowed to talk to them. Have you ever read Heinlein?”

“Kid—”

Boy Scout cut him off with a passionate kiss, tongue in his mouth, licking every bit of nicotine out from his gums. Bill was startled, but remembered to kiss back, hoping he could keep things from going too far, especially with his body responding the way it was.

Boy Scout suddenly broke the kiss. He stared at Bill with soul-searching intensity. “Who are you, Soldier?”

Bill sputtered a confused laugh. “With all that talk about souls and molecules, kid? That’s a big question.”

Boy Scout kept staring at him, his mouth a straight line.

Then the kid got up and walked out of the room, shutting the door gently behind him.

—

Bill was certain he’d been made. But Whitbeck had completed a felony-level dope deal in the meantime, which was promising, and the Satans gave him a package. Boy Scout was back on the couch with his C student friend, once again staring blankly into space.

Charlie laughed and rambled and made a few crude jokes, and let them leave unmolested, initiation notwithstanding.

They left without the Republican daughter. So in that regard, it was a failure.

“I had a chance to talk to her,” Whitbeck said on the ride back to the city. “He’s passing her around the Straight Satans. There’s no way she’s happy. Amelia will keep working her.” Amelia was his female partner, and Bill still felt a tight knot of shame at leaving her behind. 

There wasn’t a lot they could do. They had enough evidence now for a raid, but nobody wanted to risk a house teeming with minors, especially not with the Republican daughter still there. Until they got her out, their hands were tied. The Straight Satans were known to have access to an arsenal of weaponry, so it was decided to keep monitoring the situation for now. 

Bill had done all he could— Charlie had clearly pegged him as a _closet case_ so his usefulness in contacting the Republican daughter was zilch.

Bill went to his hotel bar and drank. Whisky on the rocks, two glasses. Boxing on the bar TV, and it would be home to Nancy in the morning. 

He didn’t notice anybody skulking around the bar. He didn’t notice anything weird in the whisky, but then he wouldn't. It's invisible and tasteless. 

—

Boy Scout was wrong about Bill. So was Whitbeck. He’d never taken LSD, but he wasn’t entirely a _square_. He knew what it was like to despair. He knew what it was like to flee. 

In Korea, there was never enough of anything. Not enough armour, not enough ammunition, not enough rations. Not enough warm weather gear, boots, tents. The United States was woefully unprepared for that war. Years later, they mostly liked to forget it even happened. 

The boys were woefully unprepared, too, a bunch of fresh-faced teenagers and twenty year olds, too young for the big, glorious fight they’d lost their fathers and brothers in. They’d grown up with war, heard all about it, trained for it, seen the aftermath firsthand. But nothing can really prepare you for it.

The one thing they had in abundance in Korea was drugs. Reefer, obviously, sometimes even grown near the latrine ditch in their hastily planned camps. But reefer wasn’t really enough, and this particular stuff was weak.

What defined Korea, in the way LSD was coming to define Vietnam, was benzedrine. Stimulants, uppers, combat enhancers, go-pills. Nobody was quite willing to follow the chain high enough to find out where the pills and inhalers were coming from, exactly, but if you happened to run out of them in your med kit, and you would, they were easy enough to obtain in spades.

The best thing about go-pills is that they keep you neurotically focused, and when you’re neurotically focused, you’re not thinking about your family at home, or the buddies you saw die, or your sheer existential terror. Go-pills make you very aware of the truth— that you are a body made of flesh and blood and nothing more, and you will definitely die, sooner rather than later. And that’s okay. The truth is freeing.

(This is all only true if you have the right brain for them. Benzedrine makes certain brains feel incredibly normal, and that’s the last thing anybody wanted in Korea.) 

Go-pills, if you take enough of them, and if you have the right brain for them, make everything very simple. You can be freezing in your threadbare little camp, waiting for hell to rain down on you, but it’s okay, because you were not promised anything in life, and it's not going to last long anyways. 

Go-pills make food unnecessary, which is great, because there weren't enough rations to begin with. They make sleep a distant memory, which is wonderful, because you didn’t need those nightmares. 

Bill was lucky to have the type of brain he did. Heroin was also in abundance. He'd sat in clouds of second-hand opium, and it did not appeal to him. That was lucky. Heroin’s the one, he came to understand, that people really don’t come back from.

Bill understood, academically, why some people didn’t come back. If he had stuck with the _therapeutic dose_ , maybe things would’ve been different, but nobody stuck with the therapeutic dose when they were in actual hell and there were pills and inhalers that could make it better. It got to the point where he’d spend days on benny, his teeth grinding, his limbs twitching, and he’d didn’t want more rations, or more armour, or more warm clothes. He just wanted more bennies. It was an urge, a compulsion. An itch unscratched, a sneeze unsneezed.

He knew he was going down a bad road, and he forced himself to cut back. He was lucky this way, too. Other people couldn’t do it. They’d scratch that unscratched itch right down to the very bone. With heroin, they’d tear that bone right out.

Some boys did both. Benny to speed up, heroin to slow down. Some crushed their go-pills and smoked both drugs at once, made the chemicals dance together in the Bunsen burner of their brains, an experiment to see how far away they could get from that war-torn planet.

Bill was able to quit when he got home. It wasn't easy, because everybody and their mother was taking bennies back then, but he had help. Nicotine is a stimulant, too. Cigarettes to speed up, alcohol to slow down. Sometimes both at once. 

So when he stumbled back to his hotel room that night, thinking _maybe there was something funny in that whisky,_ he knew what was coming. He was altered. He had been dosed, the very thing Whitbeck warned him about. One of Charlie’s people must have followed him.

He hurried into his room and locked the door. He poured himself a glass of water and got himself into bed. He prepared himself to ride it out.

Here’s the thing, though. No matter how much you _know_ , nothing can really prepare you for LSD.


	2. You're The Devil in Me I Brought in From The Cold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bill has been given a truth serum.

Like benzedrine, LSD was originally compounded as a remedy for respiratory ailments. Like benzedrine, the end product was something else altogether. 

The commonalities end there. LSD is not like other drugs. LSD is not habit-forming. It is neither a stimulant nor a depressant, though it is both a serotogenic and a dopaminergic. It is a drug of contradictions. 

LSD metabolizes very fast in the human body. By the time Bill was settling himself in his room and the lights were glowing with a warm, kind love, there was no longer any actual LSD in his body. His brain was starting a cascade of mysterious chemical reactions that have not been fully studied or documented. 

The sun was starting to set. Bill got out of bed and went over to the window, but he didn't make it. His feet sank into the very deep, very green carpet. Had it always been that deep? He sank deeper, deeper, deeper, until he was on his knees, petting the carpet in wonder. It was as soft as a rich lady's pampered cat, and it yielded to his touch with a sigh. It existed so he could walk on it. 

There was a soft click, and Bill, with great effort, lifted his head to gaze at the door. Somebody was picking the lock. The geometric patterns on the wallpaper were dancing, shapes rippling and turning around each other like cogs. It made the doorway shrink and sway, an optical illusion, like black and white swirls spinning, but nothing really happens.

The door slowly creaked open, letting in a beautiful spill of white light. The door took a second and an eon to open, and Bill watched, breathing and not breathing. 

Boy Scout crept in, his skin glowing, looking like an angel descending from heaven, but then it wasn't like that at all, and the white light was now hellfire.

Bill grunted uncomfortably. Boy Scout closed the door behind him, and the feeling of hellfire went away, and they were both just humans again.

Bill sighed in relief. He stretched out over the floor, wriggling his limbs on the sighing, purring, lush green carpet.

Boy Scout took off his shoes. He looked down at Bill curiously and stepped forward. His shirt was very yellow. His skin was still glowing, the blush of youth and idealism shining like a torch. His eyes were like the afterburner of a rocket, blue-green and vivid.

Bill put his chin in one hand as Boy Scout walked up. There was only one Boy Scout-- one of a kind, him-- but Bill could see every move he made before and after he did it.

"You're moving through time," said Bill.

Boy Scout smiled at him. He smiled in technicolour. "So are you, Soldier," he said, and his voice was a small forest stream. 

Bill looked at his other hand, digging back and forth into the forest floor carpet. He could see it ghosting up and down where it was, and had been, and would be. "Oh yeah," he said.

Boy Scout settled himself on his knees and watched Bill with those afterburner eyes. 

"You did this to me," Bill sing-songed.

"What did I do, Soldier?"

Bill tried to glare at him, but he was smiling too widely. "You dropped acid in my drink."

"Oh," said Boy Scout. "I should've known you'd figure it out."

"Yes, you should have," Bill tried to wag a finger, but the movement was too much to look at, plus _wag_ and _finger_ were terrible words. "You little brat. I should take you over my knee."

Boy Scout smiled and raised his shoulders bashfully. His glow was pulsing. "You wouldn't," he teased. 

"I should," Bill reiterated. "But I won't."

"You're not angry," Boy Scout said softly.

"How could I be angry?" Bill asked. He didn't remember what anger felt like. How could anyone be angry? "You're just a little boy. You don't know what you're doing. I could never be angry at a little boy."

Boy Scout was quiet. Bill crept forward and stroked the corduroy on Boy Scout's thigh. There were very tiny, tiny stitches in it. Somebody had grown the cotton and spun the thread and made those clothes so the boy could wear them. 

"I'm in too good a mood to be angry," said Bill. Or he thought it. He could see two worlds, one where he said it and one where he didn't, and it didn't make a difference, because it was still true.

"What are you doing on the floor?" asked Boy Scout. 

Bill bathed in the refreshing spring water of that young voice. "I'm petting the earth," he said.

"Oh," said Boy Scout. "That's nice. Look, there. Let's look at the sunset."

Yes! The sunset. That's what Bill had gotten out of bed for, maybe. How many years ago was that?

Boy Scout gently helped Bill to his feet. There were a couple chairs by the window, and Bill sat in one. He tried to sit nicely. The chair existed so he could sit in it. That was its reason for being. He appreciated it. 

The sun was setting in the distance. It should have been setting on the ocean, but all Bill could see was hills, up and down, dotted with buildings and billboards and trees and more lights coming on by the second.

The sun was warm and yellow and red and life and love. It shone on the earth and gave nutrients. All energy ultimate came from the sun. Bill could see the sunlight penetrate the earth. He saw it feed plants, and those plants fed animals, and those animals fed Bill. He felt sunshine energize every molecule on earth, and every molecule changed form, and moved from creature to creature. Sunlight was in every molecule that made up Bill, and Boy Scout, and everyone outside.

The sun would be rising in Korea soon.

Bill shook his head and made a noise he did not mean to make.

"I'll open the window," said Boy Scout.

Bill watched in wonder as the window slid open. Two panes sitting in a frame. Somebody made the window so he could open it. Someone took the time so Bill could enjoy the fresh air.

"Ah, fresh air!" he said as the breeze caressed his cheek. It felt like his mother touching his face on the day he was born.

Boy Scout had a cute, little, unsure laugh. "It's a nice night," he said. 

Bill was reaching out the window. It was almost dark now, and easier to see. More and more lights had come on, and the main roads pulsated like blood through an artery, cells rushing to wherever they had to go in the big organism of the city. 

"They're like stars," said Bill. "They're floating away." He reached toward the city, like he could touch it, and he could. He caught lights in his hands and they danced away like sparks at a campfire.

Boy Scout was watching him with a small smile.

Bill frowned at him. "What are you doing here?"

"I am bearing witness," said Boy Scout.

"You're not where I am," said Bill. "You're so far away."

"I know," the kid said. "I wish I was with you on your journey. But I wanted to make sure you had a good time."

"A good time…" Bill trailed off. He gazed out the window. He realized he didn't want a cigarette. He didn't want anything.

 _A good time_ didn't describe what Bill was having. But he didn't have the words. Boy Scout was right: language was a lie. It molds your thoughts and traps them in a pattern before you even know you have them.

His mother kissed his face with a breeze. How he missed her. "Why did you to this to me?" 

Boy Scout shrank a little into himself. He had so much light and intensity, but was hiding it away, a flame under glass. Bill frowned.

"I wanted to know the truth about you," said Boy Scout.

"What's the truth?" Bill made a self-effacing gesture. "I'm all here."

Boy Scout smiled sadly. "Who are you, Soldier?"

Bill felt the word like a bombshell. He jumped from his seat and looked around. But outside the city was still twinkling merrily, and Boy Scout's light was sputtering under that glass.

"Are you alright, Soldier?"

Bill shook his head. "Don't call me that," he said.

"What should I call you?"

Bill didn't feel like talking about himself. He had wandered back to the window, which was dripping, the glass running down in fat drops. He swirled his fingers in the window, tracing patterns. "It's liquid," he said.

"Yeah, it would have been, once. That's how they make glass," said Boy Scout.

Ah! It was true. "You are very smart," Bill said in awe. He looked over at Boy Scout, who was smiling bashfully. His light was a little bit stronger now, the glow in his eyes almost back. "Boy Scout is _not_ the name of your soul," Bill declared.

Boy Scout frowned, and his brow furrowed. His light flickered. "It's not?"

Bill scoffed. "Nope."

"Then what is?"

Bill kept tracing patterns in the water of the window. "I don't know. I don't know you."

Time was a funny thing. It seemed to be flattening, repeating, not going anywhere. That conversation was slow, but suddenly it was over, and either immediately after or many hours later, Boy Scout rose from his seat.

"Should I put on music?"

Bill didn't answer, or he did, but later there was a raucous noise.

"Ah!" Bill clapped his hands to his ears and turned. Some rock and roll was playing on the radio, and the sound filled the room with shards of jagged black ice. "Not that."

Boy Scout changed the station. The static scratched at Bill's skin, but then something nice and clean came out. Gershwin, maybe. It floated into the room on little yellow clouds and reminded Bill of his mother. 

"This is nice," he said. "This is nicer."

Boy Scout turned back to him, his eyes large. His light was almost entirely out.

"Your light's almost out," said Bill.

"Is it?"

"You need oxygen."

"Oh."

"Come here." Bill stepped forward, and Boy Scout came to meet him. Bill put one of the kid's hands on his shoulder, and his own hand around the boy's waist.

"You want me to be the girl," Boy Scout laughed. 

"Shush. This is how we did it in the army."

"Really?" Boy Scout gazed up at him, a youngster learning at the feet of his elders.

"Yeah," said Bill. "When things were slow, and there weren't any local girls around." He held Boy Scout closer, and the boy felt warm and delicious against him.

"That sounds nice," said Boy Scout, resting his head on Bill's shoulder.

"It was nice," Bill agreed, a little surprised. It had been a long time since he'd thought about the nice memories from back then. He'd almost forgotten there were any.

He could feel them now-- he thought he could see them, but it was really just a feeling. His old buddies, his buddies who were dead and gone, holding each other in cold tents, scratchy old records on the Victrola. 

He didn't know how to feel about that memory, so he just let it be.

Bill looked down at Boy Scout. "You shouldn't hide yourself under glass," he said.

"Okay," said Boy Scout.

Bill pulled the boy tight and kissed him soundly.

Was kissing ever a revelation right now! Boy Scout melted into his arms and his mouth, an impossible hot sweetness that filled every sense. Bill kissed with his tongue and his lungs and his heart and his brain. How could there ever be war when there was such a thing as kissing?

He pulled back, and Boy Scout lolled in his arms, breathless. His light was back, his soul glowing brightly, and his eyes were bright with that afterburn. He was moving through time again, vibrating, ageless.

Bill beamed. "You're back," he said.

"Uh huh," said Boy Scout dreamily.

"Believe it or not," Bill said. "You're not the first boy I've kissed."

"Clearly," Boy Scout blinked slowly.

Bill swayed them around the room in a dance. "I've kissed a fair few boys."

"In the army? When there were no local girls around?"

Bill stilled. "Well, yes. But even then."

Boy Scout smiled at him, stroking his arm deliciously. Bill melted into it. "Charlie always sees the truth," he said.

Bill pressed his face into Boy Scout's neck. "You shouldn't reveal people's secrets," he said. "They're secrets for a reason."

Boy Scout frowned. "But that's awfully sad, don't you think?"

"Yes," said Bill, and no more. He meant it, but words were inadequate. 

Boy Scout stroked Bill's face. "What should I call you?"

Bill felt a smile come over him. The patterns on the wallpaper had slowed to match the pace of their dance, and the soft music filled the room. They were perched high on the eleventh floor, a castle floating in the sky. 

"My mother called me Billy," he said. "She used to bathe me in the sink. She would sing me songs and make clothes for me to wear."

"She sounds lovely."

"She was." A curious pink light was moving through Bill's body. It dissipated suddenly. "My father didn't call me anything," he said. "He barely spoke to me at all."

Boy Scout looked at him sympathetically. They were no longer moving. The breeze had gone cold and the patterns on the wall were fading.

The words tumbled out of Bill before he thought them. He had been dosed with a truth serum. 

"My father was always so far away. I don't think he ever held me. He always had to work, because we had so little, but there was never any work. He was so far away. Not working, just not with us. He always had enough to drink, but we still had so _little_."

"Oh," Boy Scout murmured. He cradled Bill's face. "My poor, deprived, Depression baby Billy."

"We _were_ Depression babies," Bill said. This felt like a revelation, too. "None of us had anything. There had been a war. The war to end all wars. Then we were born. We didn't learn anything."

Boy Scout took his hand. "Let's sit on the bed."

He sank onto the bed and flopped over, down and down and down. He felt like he was floating on the ocean. The ocean was his mother and she would never let him drown. 

"My father never had a kind word," the truths kept coming. "He was never happy. The things he said to my mother. And to me."

"He didn't love you," said Boy Scout.

That felt very wrong. Bill frowned.

"No," he said. "I wouldn't say that. He loved me. But it's like you said before." He reached out, because Boy Scout was suddenly a million miles away. Boy Scout crawled into his arms, the sweet, charming kid. "My father just didn't know how to love me."

Boy Scout stroked his arms. Bill was happy to just swirl around in this haze, but Boy Scout wanted to touch and be touched, so Bill let him. "You deserved to be loved," the kid said.

"I did."

"He should have loved you better."

"He should have," said Bill. "But love is hard work."

"Love is easy," Boy Scout frowned. "It's the most natural thing in the world."

"Mm," Bill let Boy Scout kiss him sweetly. When the kid drew back, he gazed into those afterburner eyes. "Love is not a feeling. Love is an action. It's a discipline. It's skilled labour. And it is very hard work."

Boy Scout regarded him for a while, quietly. His glow was still strong, and his eyes simmered. He vibrated through time.

Bill was smiling. He sat up. "You want to fix everything, make everything right."

"Yes," Boy Scout breathed.

"You're like a little rocket. Blue flame coming out of your ass. Trying to race to the top and change everything with a bang, huh?"

"I… yeah," Boy Scout was raising his shoulders again, his light sputtering.

Bill kissed some oxygen back into him. "Don't burn out," he said.

Boy Scout lowered his head. 

Bill sat back. He nodded sagely. "I think I forgive my father."

"Oh?"

"Yes. I forgive him, I've decided." He nodded again. "He was ten years younger than I am now when he had me. Ten years ago, I was an idiot. And his life was so hard. And he was… he was a baby once, too. I just realized. He was a hurt little baby once, too."

"You're amazing," said Boy Scout, afterburner eyes glowing hot. "Charlie says we should always forgive each other right away."

The wrongness hit Bill in the chest again. "No, no, Boy Scout." The name tasted sour in his mouth, so he spat it out. Boy Scout looked startled. "Forgiveness is very powerful. It should be used sparingly."

They stared at each other for a moment, a year, and fear was coming off Boy Scout in sharp arrows that pierced Bill's skin.

"No, no," said Bill. He cradled Boy Scout's face and peppered him with kisses, while his brain's language centres struggled under the weight of the truth. Words were not enough.

"I'm not mad at you," he finally said.

"You're not?"

"No," said Bill. "That's not what I meant. I meant that forgiveness comes after. It doesn't mean you have to carry on with the person who hurt you. I could not have and should not have forgiven him until this moment, because now I finally understand him, which means he can't hurt me anymore."

Boy Scout beamed. "Because you grok him!"

Bill pulled back. "What the fuck is _grok_?" What an ugly word. It fell down around the room like glass after a bar fight.

"It means…" Boy Scout brought Bill's hands up to cradle his face again. "I understand you, because I am you."

Well, that wasn't so bad. "Yeah." It fit Bill's situation with his father to an absolute tee, in fact. "Yeah. Can you turn off the radio?"

Boy Scout hopped off the bed and turned off the radio. The silence was nice, like a weight was lifted. Bill could hear traffic outside, and felt an enormous swell of affection for nobody in particular and everyone on the planet.

He pushed himself to fit up against the headboard as Boy Scout crawled back into his arms. Boy Scout wanted lots of cuddles. Bill wondered if anybody had held Boy Scout as a baby. 

"I don't sound like myself," Bill mused. 

"Yes, you do. You didn't sound like yourself before. You were wearing a mask."

Bill frowned. "Is this what therapy is like?"

Boy Scout laughed, a quick sip from a clear forest stream. "I don't know."

"Am I going to stay like this forever?"

Boy Scout smiled up at him. "Wouldn't that be nice?"

"Yes. But I don't think I'm ready."

Boy Scout blinked, then smiled wider, looking smitten. The pink light was filling up Bill entirely. "It'll just be tonight," said Boy Scout.

Bill stroked Boy Scout's hair. "Hey," he said.

"Mm?"

"If someone is hurting you, you shouldn't stay with them."

"Nobody's hurting me," said Boy Scout. He looked so much in that moment like one of Bill's dead buddies-- perpetually twenty, perpetually big-eyed and naive-- that Bill was suddenly very cold. Even the far away traffic sounded sinister and foreboding.

"Boy Scout!" he cried. "Boy Scout!" 

"What? What is it?" the boy asked. 

Bill grabbed him, and bundled him into his lap, clutched him tightly, tucked the boy's head against his chest. "Boy Scout! Boy Scout!"

"I'm here!" The boy wiggled against him. "Billy, what is it?"

Bill caught the boy's chin in his hand. "You have to get out of there."

"Out of where?"

"You have to get away from there. You have to enrol yourself in college and stay in college until the war is over. As long as it takes."

"Okay, Billy."

"If you don't, they'll get you, and I couldn't stand it if they sent you over there."

"Okay, Billy!" Boy Scout came up for air and stroked Bill's face. "I'm not going anywhere."

Bill shook his head. He felt like screaming forever. "You can't stay where you are, either. You'll end up in jail, and I couldn't bear it."

"Okay, Billy," said Boy Scout. His eyes had all but lost their glow. They were filling with tears. They were huge. They could drown Bill, if those tears fell.

But words kept on coming. "You shouldn't let him hurt you," he said. "It's not okay that he makes you do stuff like this. I could have killed you. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Billy."

"You have to get away from him."

"Okay, Billy." Boy Scout's lip was wobbling now, and fat tears were falling silently. They fell all over him, and onto Bill. He was drenched. A summer rain.

"Don't cry," Bill said, wiping the ocean off Boy Scout's face. "Are you sad?"

Boy Scout sniffled, and smiled. The hot blue-green glow was back in his eyes. "I'm just touched that you care about me," he said.

Bill thought, _of course I care, my little afterburner,_ but he was enjoying the silence for a moment. He pulled Boy Scout closer on his lap.

Bill spent several long moments or hours or seconds stroking Boy Scout's back while the kid sniffled against his chest. Suddenly, Bill felt like talking again.

"You don't even really look like a Boy Scout."

Boy Scout smiled sadly. "No, I was never a Boy Scout. What do I look like to you?"

Bill cradled Boy Scout in his arms and looked down at him. "You look like a storybook forest prince."

The kid laughed. "What?"

"You look like your father was a valiant knight and your mother was a deer queen. And every morning you turn back into a fawn."

"Oh my god!" Boy Scout hid his face in Bill's chest and laughed. The sound was bright golden and warmed Bill to the core. 

He leaned down to kiss the boy as he calmed. He could see them moving together in time, and the molecules swirling between them and within them. So close, but so separate. 

"What did you mother call you?" he asked.

Something seemed to change in Boy Scout. He went still, and his eyes were very wide, and they contained the universe. His glow returned, though it was a different colour now, and it was very vulnerable. Bill felt a deep-seated urge to protect it.

"My mother called me Holden," the boy said very, very softly, a whisper on the breeze, a leaf falling to the forest floor.

"Oh," said Bill. That made him very happy. He tilted his head back to rest against the headboard. He closed his eyes and let the golden light of that truth dance patterns inside the darkness. "Holden. That's so much better."

Holden shifted on his lap. Bill opened his eyes. Holden looked embarrassed.

"Isn't that better?" asked Bill.

"I guess," said Holden.

"I know it is," said Bill. "Look at you. You're not some anonymous boy. You're Holden. You're a bright young man."

Holden squirmed uncomfortably, but his glow pulsed stronger.

"I think you're going to go far," said Bill.

"Thank you," said Holden, soft and sweet. He leaned up and kissed Bill on the mouth, rested his head on Bill's shoulder. "Who are you, Billy?"

Bombs were falling.

Bill screwed his eyes shut and covered his ears. But they were falling in his head, flowers of red and white inside his eyelids. He was stuck, he couldn't bend his legs to climb out of the mire he was in. He didn't know what to do, so he fell back on his training.

"Private First Class Bill Tench, RA 52 824 361, Private First Class Bill Tench, RA 52 824 361."

"Billy! Billy!" A small forest stream was trying to get his attention. Hands caught his, but he shoved them off.

"Private First Class Bill Tench, RA 52 824--"

"No, no," the forest stream soothed. Hands were caressing his face. "Bill, your eyes are closed. Bill, open your eyes."

"I don't know how."

"Just think about waking up," said the forest stream.

With great difficulty, Bill slowly opened his eyes. Holden was staring at him, but flashes of light illuminated his young face-- bombs falling outside.

Bill shut his eyes again, balling hands into fists. 

"Bill, shh! You're not a soldier anymore."

Bill cracked an eye open warily. "I'm not?"

"No… I don't think so," said Holden. "You’re safe, you're with me."

Fire flashed, and Bill flinched. "They're dropping bombs," he said. 

"No, no, look out the window. Look." Holden pointed, and Bill shakily followed his finger to the window. "Is that better?"

"Yes," said Bill. It was normal outside, and normal meant _no bombs_. It was dark and twinkling. He was shaking. He was scared to look away.

Holden rearranged himself, so he was sitting by the headboard. Bill lay on his side, cradled in Holden's lap, hugging a pillow.

Holden petted Bill's hair. "You're safe with me. You're not there anymore."

The haze of fear was retreating. Bill was left with a cold truth. The truth serum compelled him to say it.

"They made us shoot civilians," he said.

Holden didn't pause in stroking Bill's head and back.

"It wasn't… we weren't officially ordered to," Bill went on. "It was allowed. Encouraged. We would shoot rounds into the night." 

"Oh, Bill," murmured Holden.

"We dropped so many bombs," said Bill.

"It's over now."

"No," said Bill. He turned and leaned up on his hands, looking Holden in the eyes. "It's never over, Holden. Time doesn't exist. It's happening _now!_ "

Holden was close to tears again, and Bill couldn't bear that. He turned away and shifted to the end of the bed. 

"It wasn't your fault," said Holden.

"But I _did_ it," Bill insisted. He put his hands on his head as another truth dawned on him. "That's why I can't have kids. For my sins."

"That… doesn't make any sense."

"No. That's what it is. We've tried and tried." He went to the window and settled down. He gazed out at the breathing city. "How can I bring a child into the world after that? After what I've done?"

Holden came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. "I didn't want this to be bad for you. I'm sorry."

Bill shrugged. "I'm okay."

"Really? The things you're talking about…"

"I just know the truth now," said Bill. "I'm just processing. Come here." He pulled Holden down to sit on his knee. "Look. The city is breathing. It's still going. The world still turns."

"Yeah," said Holden. He kissed Bill on the cheek. "Do you want to go for a walk or something?"

"I want to hold you, and I can't do that on a walk."

Holden grinned. "Well, a change of scenery would be good for you. Maybe a shower?"

Getting across the room to the bathroom was a trek. Now that his heavy truths were out, Bill was feeling another cascade of chemical reactions, producing something even stronger than before.

Everything was a distraction. The carpet, again, the bedsheets, the fact of the radio. (It's a box of plastic and metal, and it catches inaudible voices that float in the air?)

Most of all, Holden.

They ended up in a pile on the floor, kissing and kissing. The patterns on the walls were dancing again, and Bill was incredibly fucking horny.

He couldn't stop grinding against Holden as the boy tried to take his shirt off. Holden without a shirt was something else. He was still a gawky nineteen year old, but with the beginnings of svelte musculature. He had a scar on his chest like the burn of a knife. He was shiny and wholesome, and his glow was so strong and warm. Bill was drawn to him like a moth to the flame. 

"Hnn… oh!" he said while dragging his tongue down that delicious dip towards Holden's pelvis. Another truth had occurred to him. "Holden, I'm married."

Holden flushed and wiggled and looked exasperated. "Oh?"

"See?" Bill held out his left hand. Then he fell back. "Where the fuck is my ring?"

Holden gently took his hand. "Did you take it off when you came to Charlie's place?"

A tidal wave of relief knocked Bill over. "Yes. That's it. You clever, clever boy." He gathered Holden again and pressed kisses into his neck.

The boy giggled and moved pleasantly against him. It felt like they were swimming in a sea of joy together.

Still…

"I have to find it." Bill rolled off Holden and started crawling towards the dresser.

Holden sighed. "I'll get it for you."

Bill was painstakingly climbing the Everest of the floor, and the boy zipped around him like a mosquito.

Finally, Bill made it over there. He was examining the carved wood decorations some human had made in the dresser for him to look at-- little winding branches of ivy that swayed in the breeze of life-- when Holden crouched by him again, holding a gold ring.

"This it?"

"Yessssss, thank you, sweet Holden," said Bill. He couldn't quite seem to grasp it, so Holden held his hand gently and slipped the ring onto his finger.

Bill groaned in bliss when it slid into place. It burned on his finger, a good burn, and the metal was glowing red, hot out of the forge. He waved his hand in front of his face, watching the red glow weave.

"I fucking love Nancy," he said.

"You are definitely peaking," Holden said quietly. He settled next to Bill again. "That's her name? Nancy?"

Bill closed his eyes and took a deep breath. At the tops of his lungs he yelled. "Nancy!"

"Oh my god," said Holden. 

"Nancy! Nancy!"

Nancy _Nancy NANCY_

N  
A  
N  
C  
Y

Soft hands clapped over his mouth. Holden was shaking with laughter, eyes darting nervously to the door. "Shh!" he hissed. "I get it!"

"You don't. You don't." Bill peeled Holden's hands off his mouth, and pulled him down for another kiss. "You don't know Nancy," he sing-songed.

"Tell me about her."

Bill sighed deliciously. He closed his eyes again. The room was pulsing pleasantly, floating in the sky. Swirls of love danced inside his eyelids. The hands of a forest prince stroked his chest.

"Nancy is the most beautiful creature on this earth. You'd like her because she's so smart, and she'd like you because you're so cute."

Holden huffed a little laugh, and it passed as gold across Bill's eyes.

"Nancy is a nurse. A _healer_. She _heals_ people who are _hurt_ , Holden. And she makes me… oooh my fucking godddd!" 

A forest prince was stroking his hard cock and kissing his neck, nipping at his ear.

"Fuck, yes, yes," said Bill. "She makes me feel…" he opened his eyes. "I want to hear her voice. Should I call her?"

" _No,_ " said Holden. 

"But I want to," Bill whined. He rolled over and started the long crawl towards the bedside phone.

Holden walked alongside him. "She'll know something's off," he said.

"Yes, but she'll… when I tell her how much I love her and wished she was here, it'll be fine. I wish she was here. I really wish she was here."

"Where do you live?"

"Vir-gin-yaaaa," said Bill.

Holden laughed, and then he was down on the ground with him, hugging him and pressing his face against Bill's back. Bill said "Virginia" three or four more times.

"It's too late to call her, Bill," Holden said. "You'll wake her up."

"What time is it?"

"It's about 1:00 in the morning," said Holden. "So I think 3:00 there."

"What??" Bill turned around to stare at the kid. "1:00 in the morning? What does that mean?"

"I don't know." Holden shrugged, but he was smiling, and glowing sweetly. He looked very good shirtless. 

"How do they know?" asked Bill. 

"I think it's a theory," said Holden. "Like gravity, or the concept of zero."

"Ugh," scoffed Bill. He didn't want to think about the concept of zero. It was a black hole sucking the air out of the room.

Holden crept into his arms and kissed him again. He was so warm, like a puppy out from under a pile of other puppies. 

"I miss Nancy," said Bill.

"I know," said Holden. "I'm sorry."

"She is such a good woman. She'd be a good mother. She deserves to be a mother."

Holden was looking at him sympathetically, but there was no time for that. A truth was dawning.

"We should have… raise… kids together."

Holden furrowed his brow, but waited patiently for Bill's language centres to muddle through.

" _Not_ an orphanage," Bill said. "But they shouldn't let people drown with their kids on their own. They should do it as a community. Then people who are good at it, like Nancy, get to do it, and people like my dad and your dad don't have to screw up their kids. Right?"

"Mm-hm," Holden smiled, his eyes afterburner bright. The edges that contained him were disappearing.

"Then every child gets loved the way they deserve. That's a good idea, right?"

"It's a beautiful idea," said Holden.

"How come we're not doing it already?"

Holden looked away. His eyes cast a blue-green light on all he gazed at.

"What is it?" asked Bill.

"You're talking about communal creches," said Holden. "The Soviets did it."

Bill did not recoil as much as he thought he might have. "What? They did?" 

"They did it under Lenin. But then they stopped."

"How do you know about this?"

"I read a lot."

Bill cupped Holden's face. "A boy like you shouldn't be reading about communists," he said.

Holden laughed. His eyes were so bright Bill couldn't look away. "How else am I supposed to know about the world if I don't read about it?"

"You shouldn't know about the world. You should be innocent."

"Oh god, Bill," Holden moaned. He leaned forward and kissed Bill deeply, straddling his lap. "I love you."

The words washed over Bill like chemicals down his spine. He luxuriated in the feeling, of being loved, of being told he was loved. His cock was harder than it had ever been, a beast with a mind of its own.

Holden wiggled and ground against Bill's cock. "Make love to me," he said.

"I…" Bill groaned into Holden's neck during a particularly pleasurably grind. "I can't. I'm married."

Holden looked devastated. "Bill, do you have any idea what's it like to be pawed at by you all night and then _not_ get fucked?"

Bill was overcome with laughter. When he could open his eyes, Holden was pouting at him, and he laughed harder. "You're so earnest," he said.

"I _am_ earnest," said Holden. "I am very earnestly in love with you."

"Oh, sure," said Bill, though he still enjoyed the feeling of the word.

"I love you," Holden insisted. He kissed Bill's face. "I've loved you since the moment I saw you."

"What Charlie wanted us to do," said Bill, "was not love."

"Well, but… can't you feel it now? The love between us?"

He felt it, and it was delicious. 

"You want me, right?"

"God, yes," Bill's cock twitched and strained against his pants as he thrust up towards Holden.

"Do you feel the love swirling between us?"

"Yes," he said, and he could see it, too. Holden's edges were all but gone, he was radiating everywhere, and so was Bill. Two liquids spreading out towards each other. Atoms sharing electrons. Gravity pulling planets towards the sun.

"Your love for me," Holden circled his hips on Bill's lap, "does not diminish your love for Nancy. Love only grows."

"Love only grows," agreed Bill.

"Let me share love with you, and your love for Nancy will be stronger. That's how love will change the world."

Bill groaned. Holden was too beautiful to look at. Bill was dissolving. 

"I have nothing but love for you," Holden said. "Thank you for sharing your truths with me. I grok you."

"I understand you," Bill repeated, "because I am you."

Holden caught him in another ego-obliterating kiss. Bill was on the verge, not quite disintegrating, teetering at the very edge of being a separate individual, and being something else entirely.

"Be one with me," said Holden. "Become me, Bill, and I'll become you, and we'll be together forever."

Bill's edges disappeared.

They were on the bed, though the bed was part of them, too, and all the rest of the room. The walls, the sheets, the windows; the cars on the street and the shrubs on the hills and the clouds in the sky-- they were all made of the same star stuff that made those two men, and the author, and you, dear reader.

Every kiss and touch was a lean into the melt, a turn of dough in a bowl, flour and sugar becoming something new. Bill ran his hands down Holden's bare chest, and there was no barrier; he sunk deep inside.

Holden tore off their clothes, or stripped them off carefully, as time was endless and minuscule and all that ever was, was confined to this moment. 

Bill's cock was gargantuan and wet, and Holden marvelled over it. He was some ethereal being now. Bill saw right through the gawky boy to the collection of experiences and emotions that made a soul, and it was so _bright_ and vulnerable. Bill wanted to reside inside it.

Holden took Bill between his legs, already slick. "You won't hurt me," he said, but Bill still took his time. He had all the time in the world.

Holden tossed his head, and panted, and looked so gloriously beautiful as Bill slowly inched inside. His light was shining so bright that the light was all he was, the afterburn blue of his eyes so hot they would burn Bill if Bill was still made of mortal flesh.

"Yes, yes, Bill!" he cried like a choir of angels. Bill was residing inside that beautiful light now, and settled in to make his home.

It felt like a lifetime, resting inside Holden's light, stoking the fire occasionally. Holden trembled around him, a house adjusting on its foundation.

"Bill," Holden moaned. "Like, move, or something."

Bill didn't know how to move. He didn't know how to have a body. He didn't have a body. He was nothing but energy.

Something shifted around him and his consciousness tumbled. His human vessel was on its back and a bright ball of light was straddling it.

"Yes, yes, yes," Holden breathed as he bounced himself up and down on a sensitive part of Bill's human vessel. His colours ran and his goodness burst open. Bill was making an open-mouthed moan, and he was disintegrating into love. They were two single cells, colliding to multiply and form something new. 

They dissolved and dissolved until they were nothing but a swirl of light and molecules and chemicals. They were sinking slowly into the warm ocean that once covered the entire earth, the womb of all creation, and they were one. 

Holden shouted as he came, his voice a cascade of technicolour words beyond comprehension. Bill felt the Milky Way gushing out of himself. It came and came and came. They floated in the swirling, roiling soup of the creation of the universe, young as babes and as old as the stars.

\--

An LSD trip can last up to twelve hours.

\--

Time was not accounting for itself that night. Bill dozed in Holden's arms, and woke, and they made love again, and again, on the floor, across the dresser. Each time felt endless, as well as long stretches of kissing, or talking, or being silent together.

At some point, Bill discovered the bathroom mirror. He was naked, and had been for a while, since his birth, since shedding his protective skins. The tiles on the bathroom wall were bioluminescent gems, twinkling at him as they shifted and swapped colours.

The mirror was a shimmering pool of water, rippling against the wall. It was a window to the stars. Bill was a spaceman, floating through space in a capsule for one, soaring through the vastness of himself. He was Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Captain Kirk.

The spaceman in the mirror wasn't doing what Bill did. He was in a different timeline. His organs were on the other side. But he and Bill stared at each other, the same person on opposite ends of an atom, strings reaching and tugging between universes.

A forest prince, bright golden light radiating around the room, green-blue afterburner eyes illuminating all he looked at, came into the bathroom. He looked at the spaceman in the mirror.

"How are you doing?" a cool trickle from a forest stream washed down Bill's side.

"It's…" Bill touched the mirror. The spaceman touched him back. The window between universes shimmered and crawled up his hand. He could fall in and explore a new world.

"It's…" he tried again. He was beyond words.

The forest prince, the ball of youthful light, hugged his side. "Who are you, Bill Tench?" he asked.

"I'm Buck Rogers. I'm Flash Gordon. I'm Captain Kirk."

A shimmering sigh went up his side. "What are you, Bill Tench?"

"I am me and I am nothing," said Bill. He slowly pulled his hand back from the other universe.

The spaceman in the mirror pulled back, too, and put his arm around the shiny forest prince at his side. The technicolour universe swirled behind them.

"Is that my soul in there?" Bill asked.

"Yes," said Holden.

"Why does his face look like that?"

"I think his face looks handsome."

Bill and the spaceman leaned over their sinks and stared at each other.

"He's not what I…" Bill trailed off, because he forgot what _I_ meant, and what _wanted_ was. "He's just a man," he finally declared.

"A paragon of manliness," the forest prince said. He kissed between Bill's shoulder blades.

Bill turned to look at Holden, at his forest prince, his afterburner, his bright ball of light. He looked at Holden for a long time.

"Time is real," he postulated. Enlightenment came in fits and starts, and all at once.

"Mm," said Holden.

"This is going to end. And then we'll have to say goodbye."

"Why?" Holden looked frightened, a babe lost in the woods.

"I don't know," said Bill. "Tomorrow I won't, and we'll say goodbye, probably forever. But right now, I love you."

Holden shook his head, lip wobbling. "Bill…"

"Shh." Bill cupped Holden's face and kissed him. "A fond kiss, and then we'll sever. A fond farewell, alas, forever."

Holden gasped as Bill kept kissing him.

"Deep in heart-wrung tears I pledge thee. Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee." Bill led Holden out of the bathroom. He laid his forest prince down on the forest floor, and kissed, and kissed, and kissed.

The walls around them sighed in delight.

Bill forgot many of the words, since poetry was never his strong suit. He only remembered this poem at all because it was special.

"I'll never blame my partial fancy. Nothing could resist my Nancy."

He nuzzled and rubbed against his forest prince, as language cosseted them both. Words wafted around the room like fragrant incense.

"But to see her is to love her, love but her, and love forever."

Holden whined as Bill slid into him again, licking and nipping at his collarbone.

Bill stared down into the endless depths of Holden's eyes. "Had we never loved so kindly, had we never loved so blindly…" Bill stoked the fire deep within Holden's light, and Holden cried out. "Never met or never parted," Bill whispered against Holden's face. "We would not be broken hearted."

Holden gasped and flailed, an ocean filling his eyes.

"Fare thee well, thou first and fairest!" Bill kissed one flushed young cheek. "Fare thee well, thou best and dearest!" He kissed the other. "Yours be each joy and treasure." Kiss, melt, dissolve. "Peace," kiss, "enjoyment," melt, "love," dissolve, "and pleasure!"

"Billlllll!" Holden cried, an ocean falling from his eyes.

\--

Finally, weeks later, Bill woke up, and it was daytime. It was not weeks later, he realized, it was only the next morning.

Holden came in from the bathroom, wearing a hotel robe. He had several love bites blooming across his neck and jaw.

"Good morning," he said nervously.

"Morning," said Bill. "You're still here."

"Yes. I wanted to make sure you got through it okay." He brought Bill a glass of water. "How do you feel?"

Bill gulped the water down. "Fine," he said. "Tired, I guess. Not… hungover."

Holden sat on the bed, folding his legs under him. He looked as young as he was. "Are you still…?"

Bill considered. He looked out the window. The sky was very pretty. "I'm more normal," he said. "But I'm still in a good mood."

"Okay," said Holden. He stared at the bedspread for a while, and then looked up shyly. "Who are you, Bill Tench?"

Bill sighed. "I'm with the FBI. Organized crime. You didn't get that out of me that night?"

Holden's eyes were huge. He swallowed. "I asked a bunch of times. You always took it differently."

Bill shrugged. "That's why polygraphs don't work." He reached for his cigarettes out of habit, then realized he didn't want any. "Am I basically what you suspected?"

"Sort of. I didn't suspect FBI." Holden was fidgeting. "I… I told you my real name."

"We're not after _you_. You're fine. Come here."

Holden looked terrified as he crawled over. Bill put an arm around him.

"I didn't find a badge in your things," said Holden, huddling down into Bill's chest. 

"You snooping little brat," said Bill. "Listen, it doesn't matter if you tell Charlie who I am. I was going to get burned anyway. That was the plan."

"You want Charlie to know the FBI's on him?" Holden looked shocked.

"We want the Straight Satans to know. Trying to smoke them out."

Holden frowned. "But they just do what Charlie says."

"Is that so?"

Holden flushed, and ducked his head. He said nothing more.

"Holden, you want to make a better world, right?"

"Yeah," Holden mumbled miserably.

"Well, you're an adult, sort of," Bill stroked the boy's hair. "But there are minors at that house. You have to know that's not right. Does he give that stuff to you on a regular basis?"

"Yes."

"Does he give it to the younger kids?"

"Yes." Holden's voice was very small.

Bill sighed. He was itching for that cigarette now. Holden remained leaning on his chest as he reached over for them. "I can't imagine how suggestible a teenager on that shit is," he said. "You could make the right kind of person believe anything. Bet the government would love to get their hands on it."

Holden curled into himself.

Bill lit up, blew out some smoke. They sat in silence a while. He tossed the lighter back on the nightstand. "Do whatever you're going to do, Holden."

Holden lifted his head. "You're not angry with me?"

Bill considered. He really wasn't. "I should be," he said. "Drugging someone without their consent is criminal assault. Could be a felony. I'd be within my rights to arrest you right now."

Holden shrank back uncomfortably, retreating down the bed. 

"And if you ever do that again," said Bill, "I really will take you over my knee."

It was a joke, but it didn't land. Holden furrowed his brow. "Last night, I…" he was quiet again for a while. "I love you," he said weakly.

"Jesus Christ," Bill rubbed his face. "Are you permanently fried?"

"No." Holden sounded offended.

"Last night is something I will have to scrub from my mind," Bill said.

Holden looked impossibly sad. 

Bill stretched. "Listen, kid, I still have some of that shit in my brain. I can't judge how I'll feel when I'm all the way down. I'd suggest you get the hell out of here before then, and think long and hard about what you're doing."

Holden nodded, but he didn't move.

"Okay?" Bill prompted.

"Okay, Bill," Holden said. He scampered off the bed and dressed in a hurry. He paused in the doorway. "I'm sorry," he said, and left.

Bill took another drag, and looked around the room, taking stock of everything he'd done the night before. "Shit," he said.


	3. You're Part of a Life I Never Had

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A year and a half later.

Time always sorts itself back out in the end. Matter has a habit of falling towards itself. Entropy. Decay.

Bill went back to normal, basically.

He went home to Virginia. He worked. He consulted on other gang cases in other little cities and towns, but nothing that took him back to California. It didn't matter. It was the same everywhere.

He did not find it particularly fulfilling. But that's being a grown up, isn't it?

He worked, and he golfed, and he gained a little weight. He made love to Nancy, and fought with Nancy, and held Nancy as she cried after another failed fertility treatment. He moved relentlessly through time. He aged. Everybody aged.

He thought about Holden sometimes, but like all memories, they eventually faded. That night became more like a dream, but a dream that was real, that he had lived and walked in.

Bill was furious in the days immediately after. He'd been trained six ways from Sunday to prevent being compromised, and he'd never been so compromised as _that_. He'd had an image of himself that had been thoroughly shattered, and truths he'd tried to keep at bay were out in the open now. Unhideable.

He'd run around on Nancy. He broke a sacred oath. It may as well have been treason. He'd fucked a nineteen year old. A nineteen year old _boy_.

But time passed. He got over it, he told himself. 

It had been over a year, and he hadn't thought about it in months, except when he would look over the office at a sea of grey walls and black suits and white faces and miss the ocean of technicolour. But there was no itch to scratch or sneeze to sneeze. Just a fond remembrance.

\--

It was a hot fucking day, the kind of day where you could see heat rising off the pavement, and a single shower didn't cut it. 

Bill went to the canteen for lunch, and agents were gathered around the cashier's radio, agitated and chattering.

"What's going on?" he asked as he got his tray.  

"Someone murdered Sharon Tate!" a young agent said, disgust on his face.

It took Bill a moment to place the name. "The movie star?"

"Yes! Butchered her in her own home. She was pregnant!"

"Jesus," said Bill. 

"They wrote 'pigs' in the wall with her blood!" The young agent's eyes were bright.

"I think that's just a rumour," said the young agent's senior partner, who was handing cash over to the beleaguered lunch girl. "They just found the bodies this morning. It's only 10:00 AM there."

"I heard it was Satanists," said the young agent.

"How could you have heard that?" said his partner. "It's only been on the news for twenty minutes."

"The other thing I heard is that her husband, the director, he put a hit on her."

"Donnie, shut the fuck up," snapped his partner. 

Bill smirked as he paid for his lunch, and decided to bring it back to his office. The canteen was full of grown men gossiping like schoolgirls. Even federal agents weren't immune to salacious Hollywood murders.

He was enjoying a smoke and a post-lunch perusal of Playboy when his junior partner came by his desk.

"Hey, Bill. There was a call for you from the LAPD. They have some guy in their custody who's been asking for you."

"Huh?"

"They've had him a few days. He was picked up for pimping an underage girl."

Bill frowned. He had made contact with a few pimp types the last time he was in LA, and word about him could have gotten around, he supposed. 

"This guy's saying he knows who killed Sharon Tate. And, well, they're drowning in calls about Sharon Tate, but when they realized there actually _was_ a Bill Tench in the FBI, they figured they might as well try."

"What's the mook's name?"

"Uh," the agent glanced at his message slip. "Holden Ford."

Bill's stomach flipped.

"You want me to call them back for you, tell them to pound sand?"

"No," Bill took the message slip. "I'll handle it." 

\-- 

One single arrest for pimping was not quite FBI worthy. The unit chief wouldn't approve it, so Bill had to pay for the flight himself, and he couldn't take his partner.

It was dark when he got into LA. He was expecting to be told by the precinct officers-- not Whitbeck's precinct, unfortunately-- that he couldn't talk to Holden until the morning. 

But they really were drowning in Tate calls, apparently, and the place was a frenzied mess. They were taking every crazy lead seriously. They took him to the detention centre, and he paced around in the interrogation room, waiting. Holden, apparently, wouldn't talk to anybody but him.

They finally led the kid in, and he looked terrible. They didn't manacle him, but he clearly hadn't washed or slept in days, his neat A+ student clothes dirty and crumpled.

Nonetheless, he beamed when he saw Bill. "You came!"

"Pimping an underage girl," snarled Bill.

That wiped the grin off the kid's stupid face. "What? Oh, no, Bill. No, no."

"I read the arrest report, Holden. She's sixteen. You're twenty-one. That's despicable." 

"Did you talk to Debbie? Did you see her? Is she okay?" Holden asked.

"That's the girl? Debbie? Jesus, Holden. I should have figured, after what you did to me. Little criminal mastermind."

Holden looked stricken, then his gaze went far away, and an amused little smile graced his lips. 

"What the fuck are you smirking about?" Bill spat.

Holden sighed, and he sat neatly across the table. "I was just thinking. If you knew Debbie and I, you'd know how ridiculous this was. Me pimping her. If anything, it's the other way…" he didn't finish his thought, resting his head in his hands miserably.

Bill sat in his chair and lit a cigarette.

"Bill," said Holden. "I am really, truly sorry for what I did to you."

"Save it," muttered Bill.

"No, please. It's been eating me up. I'm sorry for drugging you, and for prying into your secrets. You'd be absolutely right to put me in prison, and I would go without complaint, if it wasn't for Debbie." He shifted uncomfortably. "I'm sorry for raping you."

Bill recoiled. "Shut the fuck up!"

"I'm sorry, Bill."

"You did not--" Bill glanced at the observation window. With luck, it would be too busy for anybody to be watching them. "You didn't rape me," he whisper-hissed.

Holden gave him a flat look. "Would you have done it if I hadn't drugged you?"

"No," Bill mumbled around his cigarette.

"Then what else would you call it?"

Bill glared at the kid. This was not a conversation he ever wanted to have about himself. "I flew here from Virginia, Holden. You wasted a bunch of government resources to tell me that? "

"No," Holden said. He straightened up. "I know who killed Sharon Tate. It was Charlie." 

Bill tilted his mouth skeptically.

"Or… someone in the Family, at least."

Ah. Bill took another drag, sprawled out over his chair. "Do you have any evidence?"

"No…" Holden shifted again. "But I know about some other things they've done. I… I've been trying to tell the police. But they always said he was only a drug dealer and it was some other team or precinct that dealt with the other stuff… and the precincts don't talk to each other? I don't get it!"

"Mm," Bill reluctantly agreed.

"So when they arrested us, I thought maybe you would listen to me, if they wouldn't. And when I heard about Sharon Tate, I knew for sure it was him."

"Why didn't you get a lawyer? Or call your parents?"

"I don't have any money," said Holden. "And a public defender… I really wanted to talk to you first."

"So you let your poor Debbie sit in jail for three days to talk to me?"

Holden looked shocked. "Has it been three days?"

Bill narrowed his eyes. "Are you fried right now?"

"No!" Holden shook his head insistently. "I haven't done anything since… since that night. But sometimes I get confused…"

Bill regarded the boy. A few buddies had come back from Korea like that. Scattered, forgetful. They'd sleep for days or not at all, and get confused. Could acid do that to someone? Or was it something else?

"So how do you know Charlie did this?"

"It's a long story."

"Well, I flew all the way out here. Start with Debbie." Bill leaned back in his seat, cigarette in his mouth. 

"Debbie was in the Family before I was," began Holden. "She recruited me. For me, Debbie was where it was at, not Charlie. But she convinced me it was him. Now that I've had some time to… dry out, I've realized that all the best ideas were really hers."

There was a pitcher of water in the corner of the room, and Bill poured them each a glass.

"Thank you," said Holden.

"So this Debbie lured you in? You had a relationship with her?"

"I love her," said Holden.

"How old was she?"

"She was fourteen… she's seventeen in a month, so yes, she was fourteen."

"How old were you? Nineteen?"

"I may have been eighteen," Holden mumbled.

"Like that makes it better," Bill spat. "Your generation is going to ruin this country."

Holden scowled. "It's not like we invented it. My mother got married at sixteen to an older man, and everyone thought that was a _great idea_."

"Speaking of which, why didn't you call your parents? Or Debbie's?"

Holden shook his head. "We can't. Neither of us. That's just-- we can't."

"I don't know what happened," said Bill, "but if my kid were involved with those freaks, I'd want to help him get out."

"I thought you couldn't have kids," said Holden, looking Bill straight in the eye.

Bill let the silence hang a moment. "You're a real piece of shit, you know that?"

"Yes," Holden said quietly. He looked down at the table.

Bill sighed around his cigarette. That didn't feel as good as he hoped it would. "So you and Debbie took up with Charlie. Then what?"

"Well, it was great at first," Holden said. "I really felt like I'd found home. But some of what Charlie said was… I don't know. It made sense when I was on acid. Other times it didn't make as much sense. But Debbie _loved_ him, she thought he was a genius."

"A fourteen year old thought he was a genius," said Bill.

"Yeah, I realize now… it's hard to explain, Bill. It made so much sense at the time."

Bill took another puff, made a _go on_ gesture.

"I wasn't as happy when you came over. But I was denying it. I didn't know what else to do. Then Charlie wanted me to find out who you were, so I went, and we--"

"Yeah, yeah," Bill cut him off. "So what about the murders?"

Holden nodded. "After that night I stepped back. I didn't take any more acid. By spring, I really didn't want to be there anymore. Charlie was violent. I mean, he was always violent, he would hit us. Especially the girls." He had a faraway look in his eyes. "But until you said that people shouldn't hurt me… I guess I was just used to it."

Bill said nothing.

"There were a few people who came for drugs, who I-- I strongly suspect Charlie had the Straight Satans murder them. I only know nicknames. I wish I could be more helpful. He poisoned some with bad mushrooms there at the house, and had the Straight Satans drive them off. I don't know if they died or… did you hear that a Black Panther was found in a ditch?"

Bill shook his head. He may have heard that, but he wasn't part of the unit monitoring the Panthers. 

"I have no idea who that guy was, but Charlie… even if he didn't kill him, he thought he did? He was terrified the Panthers were going to come for revenge. That's around the time we left the house and went to live with Dennis Wilson."

"The Beach Boy?" Bill curled his lip.

Holden nodded. "He was going to help Charlie make his music. Put him on a record."

"Did he?"

"I don't know. I left before then."

"Why, you don't like the Beach Boys?" Bill quipped.

"I mean…" Holden looked befuddled. "They're fine, I guess."

"I liked Little Deuce Coupe," said Bill. 

Holden looked at Bill softly, and Bill realized he had fallen into the interrogative pattern of being friendly. He scowled. 

"So what else? How does you not liking Beach Boys make Charlie a killer?"

Holden sighed. "I really wanted to leave. But I didn't have anywhere to go. I was thinking about going to college. Thinking about you, a lot," he smiled weakly. 

Bill did not smile back.

"I couldn't leave Debbie," Holden went on. "She loved the Beach Boys."

Bill couldn't help but huff a laugh. "Figures. How'd you convince her to leave?"

Holden slumped. "They shot Dr. King."

"Charlie shot Dr. King."

"No, Bill," Holden rolled his eyes, looking appropriately twenty-one and exasperated. "Dr. King was shot, and we were all at Dennis Wilson's house, and Charlie… Charlie was praying for Dr. King to die."

"Hmm," said Bill.

"I mean, I thought it was callous but I already knew Charlie was an idiot by then. But it really upset Debbie. It was like… finally she saw who he was."

"Well, good," said Bill.

"So we left, about two weeks after that. She was mad at me, though, for a while. She can be really mean when she's mad." His shoulders bunched up a bit. "We came down to the city, but we didn't have anywhere to go." Holden leaned on the table earnestly. "I remembered what you said, Bill. I thought about it a lot. I really want to go to college, I've been studying for it… but Debbie has to finish high school. So I got a job. I wash dishes. We found a place, and Debbie went to school. The landlord thinks she's my sister. She's doing really well!"

"So how'd you end up here?"

Holden blinked. "Well, I mean… one person washing dishes doesn't make a lot of money."

Bill sighed wearily.

"I wasn't _pimping_ her," Holden insisted. "We went out together. It was her idea."

"A sixteen year old's idea," Bill said drily.

"She's smart for her age," Holden said.

"Holden," Bill sighed. "No, she isn't."

"We've done it before," Holden mumbled, looking away.

Bill grunted as he shifted in his seat, leaning his forearms on the table. "Well, that helps a little, I guess. We'll get you a lawyer. Try to get you the right charge. It might not be that bad."

Holden smiled in relief. "Thank you, Bill."

"So," Bill tapped the table. "Sharon Tate."

Holden nodded. "When Dr. King died, Charlie was excited to see the riots. He thought it was his prophecy coming true."

"His prophecy?"

Holden looked embarrassed. "He thought that African-Americans were going to rise up and take over society. And kill all the whites."

"Huh," said Bill.

"I mean, that part… that's not the crazy part. And at first I thought, well, I can't really blame them. And it couldn't be any worse than this. Except for killing us all, I mean."

"Hmm," grunted Bill.

"But…" Holden tilted his head. He looked troubled. "We were supposed to find a hidey hole in the desert to wait out the race war. And when it was over, and the whites were all dead, the Negroes were going to realize they couldn't run society. And we were going to come out of hiding, and… the Negroes would make Charlie their king."

There was silent a moment. Bill laughed, though he was utterly confused. "Charlie thought the black man was going to make him king."

"Yes."

Bill laughed harder. "And you believed him?"

"I didn't know about it until Dr. King!" Holden cried. "I thought he wanted world peace!"

"Well, he did, in a way," said Bill.

Holden covered his face. "It's embarrassing," he said. "I'm really-- sometimes I wonder if I was still getting high at the time if I would've believed it? And that's terrifying to me."

That sobered Bill. "I don't think you would have," he said gently.

Holden looked miserable. He shook his head. 

"How does Charlie being king of the Negroes relate to Sharon Tate?" Bill prodded.

Holden sighed. "You remember the rioting," he said.

"Oh, I remember the rioting."

"They didn't riot in LA," said Holden. "They did a solidarity march instead. Whites and blacks marching together to honour Dr. King. Debbie wanted to go."

"And I guess that was a problem for Charlie," said Bill.

"It was a _huge_ problem for Charlie. Both there not being riots, and Debbie wanting to go to the march. He…" Holden trailed off. "No riots meant his race war wasn't coming. So he started talking about how we were going to start it. He wanted to… he was going to kill his enemies, and blame it on Negroes. I heard him to say to Sadie, about one of the drug dealers I was talking about. 'Make it look like spades,' he said."

Bill watched Holden, who looked haggard and sad, staring at the table.

"Debbie and I ran away that night," Holden muttered.

"What did they do to that drug dealer?" Bill asked. "How'd they make it look like Negroes?"

"I don't know."

"So how do you know they did Tate?"

Holden leaned forward eagerly. "Sharon Tate was a beautiful blonde movie star. She was the paragon of white womanhood. One of Charlie's goals was to take all the white women away so black men would get frustrated that they couldn't have them."

"What?"

Holden waved a hand, continuing. "Sharon Tate was rich and lived in a fancy house; she was iconic of white America. I presume she had black housekeepers. To Charlie, it would make sense that people would think black people hated her, because _he_ thinks black people hate her. He wrote 'pigs' on the wall, who else calls authorities pigs but black people?"

" _Everyone_ calls authorities pigs," Bill said. "And wouldn't that be referring to the victims?"

"Charlie has logic in his mind, and he assumes everyone else has the same logic," said Holden. "To him, it's something black people say, whether it's about the victims or authorities. Can you think of anyone else who would call _Sharon Tate_ a pig?"

"Yes," said Bill. "Somebody who knew her personally. And I've heard a lot of weird theories today, but none of them involve a Negro revolution."

Holden wiggled impatiently in his seat. "It doesn't matter! I-- I've been reading about psychology. That's what I want to study in college. I never thought about it until you said I should go." He reached towards Bill's hands, but stopped himself. "Charlie is not rational, so you can't expect his actions to be rational. They make sense _to him_. Terrible things happened to Charlie, Bill, it was relentless what they did to him. He sees himself as a victim, and as his own hero."

"Kid…"

"I'm scared that he's going to keep doing this, and nobody's going to catch him," Holden said breathlessly. "People write him off as just a hippie or just a drug dealer, but he's so much more dangerous." 

"It's a big leap," Bill said. "Unless they can connect Tate to Charlie or the Satans--"

Holden made a frustrated whine. "It could have been anyone!" he cried. "Hollywood is full of beautiful blonde women and rich white people. He was recording music with the Beach Boys! She could've looked at him funny at a party, and that would be enough for someone like Charlie."

 _Huh,_ Bill thought. 

"Bill," Holden's voice was suddenly much softer. "I gave you a therapeutic dose of LSD."

"Therapeutic!" Bill scoffed, sneering.

"I've seen Charlie give people four or fives times that," Holden said, his gaze intense. "More, even. And they didn't figure out they were on acid, like you did. They would have genuinely thought they were melting, or the Devil was talking to them. If you were religious or something…"

"Jesus," Bill muttered. 

Holden’s eyes were gleaming. "Charlie would guide people. That's what I tried to do with you, but… you were so mentally strong. Most of us weren't like that. Charlie would tell us things, and we'd believe it. You said it yourself, the right kind of person would believe anything on acid.

"These people, they're… they're not on the same planet. They're not operating by the same rules we are. It's like… imagine waking up in a world where everyone has three eyes. Everything would be different, right? But you wouldn't be able to follow those rules."

Bill heaved a sigh. "How are we supposed to figure out these crazy person rules, then?"

"I don't know. Somebody should be studying it." Holden raised his shoulders bashfully. "Maybe the FBI should be studying it."

Bill groaned. He rubbed his face. "Oh, Holden." 

Holden slumped in his seat. "I am truly sorry about what I did," he said softly, his voice a little forest stream. "Bill, I don't know what you saw that night, or how you felt after. I wasn't tripping with you… I mean, I had some grass earlier but I was basically sober." He put his hands on the table. "But that night was profound for me. You were so kind. And you touched me… nobody's ever been so gentle with me. I love--"

Bill rose from his seat.

"I don't mean-- I'm not trying to-- please, Bill, please, stay." Holden looked at him imploringly, and Bill grudgingly sat. "I don't mean like… that way. Or that I think anything will happen. I just… you were the first really good person I've ever known. You changed my life. Thank you." He laid his head down in his arms on the table. "I don't know if this is helpful. That's all I wanted to say. I'm sorry. Thank you for listening."

Bill took a quiet puff and watched Holden slump on the table miserably. He looked at Holden for a long time. 

"You know, I read some Heinlein," Bill finally said, ashing his cigarette.

Holden looked up. "What? Really?"

Bill nodded. Rested his hands on top of his head. "Is it just me or does that guy want to bang his daughter?"

Holden huffed a sad laugh. He looked down at his hands. "Yeah," he said quietly. "It's weird."

"Here's what I'm going to do," said Bill. "I'm going to check on Debbie, and make sure she's okay. I'm going to call my contact who was investigating Charlie, and say you want to make a deal. I'll find you a lawyer. I'll see about posting your bail."

"I can pay you back--" Holden started, but Bill waved him off.

"When I get you and Debbie out of here," Bill went on, "I'll take you for a burger, because you look like you need it."

Holden beamed. His eyes were bright and large. Bill didn't see that afterburner glow, but he felt it, and it was warm. "Thank you, Bill." 

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from "Moon Sammy" by Soul Coughing. Chapter titles are from "Setting Sun" by the Chemical Brothers.
> 
> I posted [a writing playlist](https://8tracks.com/vivarocksteady/truth-serum) because I am self-indulgent.
> 
> Bill's poem is Ae Fond Kiss by Robert Burns.
> 
> I think Heinlein's more incesty books came out after this period, but I couldn't resist imagining the look on Bill's face. 
> 
> PS, I started writing this on Legal Cannabis Day here in Canada. Congratulations everyone, we did it!
> 
> [I'm on tumblr!](http://vivarocksteady.tumblr.com/)


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